Also, she’s currently loudly singing “You better watch out, you better not cry, Santa Claus is coming to town” at the top of her lungs, nearly an hour after bedtime. The irony is not lost……

Lilli’s Zoo Camp class for this year. All the girls in her group are her buddies – Kelly is right next to her, and then Livvy, Kaitlyn and Lily D are on the right side. And Lilli really does have shorts on under that enormous T-shirt. It was a great camp to wrap up her last summer camp for 2016 before heading into 2nd grade.

Abbi’s masterpiece – and really the first piece of art she had created that had a “story” outside of just random scribbles.

And after Zoo Camp Lilli (and Abbi) had a couple short days of Granny Camp. Our school “starts” with a Friday half-day – which means parents are mostly stuck that last week of the summer because no one offers camps for just a few days. It’s super frustrating and no one has any clue why they do it that way. But of course Lilli never minds a few days away at Granny Camp.

They were picked up on Friday night so Brent and I had a glorious weekend to ourselves! He planned a super trip for us to day hike at Fall Creek Falls. We’d never been and since it’s a couple of hours drive we knew as a family the girls wouldn’t enjoy the drive there, for the amount of hiking they enjoy.

We hiked several miles in trails and enjoyed lots of pretty views. It was a hot August day, but we did have plenty of shade to make it pretty bearable. And with no kids to drag behind you or carry…..a little heat is no big deal.

The only down side was that it’s a really, really crowded place. Just insanely crowded. It wasn’t often at all that we were ever alone, and on the most popular trails you were constantly passing people or had people right behind you so it was hard to just enjoy nature.

The prettiest, and most popular, was the climb to the bottom of the falls. It’s steep downhill and then we were meeting a lot of people climbing back up having a tough time. But the view was so nice.

And at the bottom – it was just shoulder to shoulder people. We had wanted to eat our picnic lunch down there but it was so crowded and full of people smoking that we found a rock to eat on on the climb back up instead.

At the bottom….

And back at Granny Camp…..Lilli was reminding us why we had planned a haircut for her the day before school started.

On Tuesday night we met Jeff and Michelle at Omni Hut – and we finally got to experience it’s awesomeness. Apparently our excitement resulted in us never getting a group shot, but they were there. We had so much fun sampling a ton of different things from the menu, but the highlight (besides the fruit tea) was definitely the burnt sugar cube. And our hilarious waitress. We shut that place down, as is our custom.

We had so much fun that night and looking back I’m so glad we went that Tuesday as a precursor to all the crazy life events waiting to happen just around the bend. Or basically the very next day.

The next day the girls were back and Abbi was in a great mood.

Lilli was a little less thrilled to be home……with one last day of summer break before heading back to school.